A lot of questions have been coming up recently around video and broadcasting and recording and teaching! While I don’t have all the answers, and there truly is no one right answer, this episode should be used as a launching pad for determining your own video needs!
Let’s start with the first tool that comes to mind with online video…
Zoom.
Zoom is easy. People understand it nowadays, they know that it is there that they just click on a link and that they are able to access a live video conferencing environment. That’s what Zoom is; Zoom allows for people to meet and do whatever it is that they want to do.
Zoom is not the best at audio quality, but it is far better than not being able to connect and see each other. In addition to that, Zoom has a recording feature, which makes it really nice to be able to record live meetings and live interactions.
In fact, you can also jump into your own zoom meeting and record it and use that video inside your courses. You can record your entire course on zoom and there’s nothing wrong with it.
It’s a great place to start. Now. If you want to get more specific for the different purposes of video content. We can go into other channels.
Live Online Music Teaching Platforms
Back in November, I did a deep dive series on four of the platforms that are designed for video conferencing for music lessons. They are designed to have a high fidelity, which makes the audio quality that much better. They are designed to foster the classroom feel or the lesson feel and they’re really, truly best in class products!
These tools are Muzie, Musicology, Rock Out Loud Live, Blink Lessons and there’s now Forte Lessons as well. Here’s the link to the founders series.
I would recommend checking these tools out and find the one that is right for you right now.
If you teach on Zoom, fine; if you teach on one of these other five platforms, fine; no problem!
Let’s switch gears away from the live teaching to discuss broadcasting.
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is going live! Whether it be on instagram, Facebook or YouTube. It is doing something live, that is a one way push ~ a one way video interaction. (Technically you can bring someone else into your broadcast but that’s not exactly the point.)
With Instagram, you’re gonna broadcast directly using the camera on your phone because Instagram is a mobile app.
With Facebook and YouTube, you can use the native app, whether it’s on your phone or otherwise, or you can use a third party tool such as a StreamYard or OBS. (You can also use Zoom for this, although it puts a large Zoom logo on the broadcast!)
Browser-based broadcast tools
StreamYard and reStream (among others) are web based browser tools that allow you to do broadcasting. They are designed to give you more control and provide you with a better experience for those broadcasts than the native apps.
If your viewers leave comments, you can pop the comments up on the screen, you can put up your own lower thirds, you can put your own logo in and a few other bells and whistles that you can’t do natively.
I personally use StreamYard to broadcast into the Expand Online Community and I go live inside the community every Monday at 10 AM Pacific.
OBS – Open Broadcast Software
OBS was designed for a number of different uses and most of it started with gaming, I believe.
OBS is free to download and open source, meaning it’s built by its community! Within the app, you can do whatever you want from adding multiple video cameras, multiple audio inputs, screen input and more. These all go into what are called scenes. A scene has a certain layout on the screen and you can toggle between multiple scenes during your broadcast.
OBS is a great too but it takes a little bit of time to set up and get comfortable with. I think that it is worth the time when you have time to start figuring it out. I would definitely set aside time and plan on not being productive during that time so that you can watch a lot of Youtube videos, you can learn how to use that software if you are interested in doing more broadcasting.
Recording for Courses and Social Media
When I think of recording, I think of videos that you upload to instagram, Youtube and Facebook as well as inside your courses or your membership sites or your group programs.
Essentially they are “produced videos.”
Recording the raw video content can be done with whatever camera, equipment and software you want.
The production comes from editing. I personally use Camtasia and many of my clients use iMovie. When I am creating direct to camera videos, I’ll record them right in Camtasia so that they are readily available for editing. I use Zencastr, which is a browser based recording tool, for recording interviews and panel conversations (like those that are in the Expand Online Summit!)
Did you enjoy this episode? I would love your feedback. Do you want more episodes like this? Do you want me to go deeper? Let’s connect!
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